Today, I thought I’d talk about
Passover, especially since it happens to fall on my birthday this year, April
21st. (Please note that I won’t be mentioning any pagan holidays,
even if it is that time of year.)
Passover is the first Holy Day (holiday) of
the biblical calendar, and this year (2019) it begins at sundown on April 20th,
continuing until sundown on April 21st. Immediately followed by the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Day of First-fruits, and, of course,
the Feast of Weeks, Passover is the first of the Spring Feasts of Yehovah.
Like all other Feasts commanded by the God
of Israel, Passover has both symbolic and prophetic meaning, but it is also a
memorial of events that took place even before the Israelites received the
Torah of God through Moses at Mt. Sinai.
When Moses had been sent by God to liberate
Yehovah’s people from slavery in Egypt, the last plague God sent was death, a
death which would strike down the first-born of every family both Egyptian and
Hebrew. However, Yehovah is the savior, and He gave the Hebrews a way to escape
this death: simply take the blood of a lamb, use a hyssop branch to apply the
blood to the lintel and doorposts of the entryways into the house, and while
eating the meat of the slain lamb that night, along with unleavened bread and
bitter herbs, death would simply PASS OVER the house, leaving the people inside
the house safe and untouched.
This last plague God sent to Egypt finally
convinced the Pharaoh to allow the Hebrews safe passage out of Egypt. Thus
began their journey to Mt. Sinai where they received the commandments of
Yehovah and entered into a blood covenant with Him, a covenant which they soon broke,
before they even left the mountain to continue their journey.
During these events, God set a pattern in
place, not just for prophecy: the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, slain
to pay the penalty of Israel breaking their blood covenant agreement with the
Almighty at Mt. Sinai. This abstract ritual, of applying the lamb’s blood to
the door of your house to save you from death, has deeper spiritual meaning
that still applies to us today.
It begins with the first and most obvious
step. Since the wages of sin is death, and we don’t want death; God is trying
to save us from death, so we need to be free from sin. So Jesus, the spotless
Lamb of God, who had never sinned, willingly died an acceptable sacrifice to
forgive the world of its sin. However, just because we may have forgiveness of
sins, doesn’t mean we won’t continue to sin and thus continue to be bound for
death. This leads us to the next step.
We need to use the blood of the Lamb. But
what is the blood… spiritually speaking? And how do we apply it in our lives…
and apply it to what?
First I’ll explain the blood of the Lamb.
Jesus’ blood, he said, ‘this is the renewed covenant in my blood, which is shed
for many for the remission of sins.’ (Mat. 26:28) And in the book of Acts,
chapter 2, and verse 33, ‘he (Jesus) has shed forth this, which you now see and
hear.’
“Incidentally” this outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, on the day of the Feast of Weeks, coincides with the anniversary of when
the blood covenant was made between Israel and the Almighty at Mt. Sinai
(remember what I said about God setting up a pattern), and on this day God
Himself gave the first commandments (the Big Ten) directly to the people,
shouting down to them from atop the mountain.
Another good NT verse to put in here would
be Heb. 9:14, ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead
works (that being sin) to serve the living God?’
To put it in simple English, the blood of
the Lamb is the power we receive through the Holy Spirit to overcome sin. But
what is sin, then?
1 John 3:4, ‘Whosoever commits sin is also transgressing
the law, for sin is the transgression of the law.’ But not just any law: the
law of God. And the law of God has been given to us by His prophets, so we need
only read the scriptures. In fact, when Yehovah told Moses about the coming of
the prophet (Jesus), He told him that he would be like Moses, in that God would
speak directly to him the laws and instructions (torah literally means
instruction) for the people to hear and obey.
Now a point of clarification would be
appropriate, I believe. For many people associate the laws God gave through
Moses with the Jews, which is actually a very common error, and one that makes
it difficult to properly understand the scriptures. I’ll elaborate.
Most people use the word ‘Jew’ as if it’s synonymous
with words like ‘Israelite’ or ‘Hebrew.’ But ‘Jew’ has only two historically correct
meanings. The first to come into existence is ‘someone from Judea.’ Are you
aware that the term ‘Jew’ is not used in scripture until the later chapters of
the Kings and Chronicles? This is when the ten northern tribes of Israel were
broken up and scattered amongst the gentiles in and around the region of the
Galilee. The two remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, came together to form
Judea, and from then on a person from Judea was referred to simply as a Jew.
That right there means that whoever came
before that time (Kings David, Solomon, and Saul, and Prophets Samuel, Nathan, and
even Moses) were not Jews, because Judea, and therefore Jews, did not yet exist.
The second correct definition refers to
those who practice the man-made religion of the Jews, nowadays called Judaism.
I know many people think that the religious Jews throughout history follow the
Torah of Moses, but that is a steaming pile of a horse manure. In truth, the
religious Jews made up their own torah to replace the one the Israelites
originally received through Moses.
In the days of Jesus, this man-made religion
had already taken hold in Judea, and thus many times in the New Testament the
word ‘Jew’ is used in the religious sense, not the geographical one. We must
examine the context to know for sure. A good example of this is John chapter 1,
in which the author tells us about ‘Jews’ coming to John the Baptist to ask him
some questions, but later on in the same chapter, John (the author) clarifies
this statement by calling them Pharisees.
Pharisees were the ‘Judaists’ of that era,
but only going by a different name. They still had their Rabbis and their synagogues,
and their false teachings. And of course since none of this came from God,
Jesus was adamantly against it, which is actually quite amusing if you think
about it, since Jesus taught in their synagogues: that would be like a Protestant
coming to preach in a Catholic church (hilarious in my opinion). And also,
considering these things, the testimony of Stephen in the 7th chapter
of Acts makes a lot more sense.
So the law, getting back to the main topic
here, is what we are living by if we’re not sinning, but living righteously in
the eyes of Yehovah. In fact, there are scriptures which speak quite plainly to
this fact: Gal. 4:4-5, ‘But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth
His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.’ And Gal. 3:24, ‘Wherefore
the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified
by faith.’
Now, I’m sure many people already have
rebuttals surfacing in their minds, but please consider the following: Jesus
himself said that he came to fulfill the law, not to destroy it. And he
provides an excellent example of how to follow the law, the New Testament way.
Consider the following passage in John 8:3-11,’And
the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when
they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken
in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such
should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they
might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on
the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he
lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the
ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went
out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left
alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself,
and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers?
Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
The Pharisees were correct in that
according to the law of Moses, this adulteress should be put to death. But
Jesus, having come to save, not to condemn, knew that her continuing in sin
would lead to her death eventually, unless she was given grace from God to
escape her sin and its consequence. From the very last line of the passage it’s
obvious that Jesus knew she was a sinner, but he was willing to pardon her past
sin and give her the simple instruction to sin no more.
In this and other examples, Jesus shows
that the law is never nullified but also that the law by itself can make
nothing perfect. This is why the power of the Holy Spirit, the power to overcome
sin, is so precious: it helps us to actually live by the standards God has put
before us in His Word. The Holy Spirit has been in operation for us since
creation and it has never stopped working. However, the gift of being filled to
overflowing with the Spirit had yet to come. But of course Jesus knew this gift
was coming soon.
This takes us to the next step in the
pattern: applying the ‘blood’ to the lintel and doorposts of our house. I’ve
already touched on the lintel and doorposts actually: what we need to apply the
power of the Holy Spirit to in our lives, the commandments and instructions God
has given us for how we ought to live.
You may ask, ‘How does the lintel and
doorposts symbolize the laws of God?’ It’s actually not that complex: the door
is the thing we must pass through in order to get inside the house (you may
call this house the house of God, the household of faith, or something like
that). And we could say that specifically the lintel represents the laws
themselves while the doorposts represent the prophets, which isn’t much of a
stretch since it is by the prophets we receive the instructions from God in the
first place, and so the law (the lintel) rests on the prophets (the two doorposts)
with the blood of the lamb needing to be applied to each part. Of course, you
could have the two sides/posts without the lintel above connected to the roof,
but that just gives you a gate, prophets and ministers in the Bible often being
depicted as gates notwithstanding.
Remember what Jesus said, ‘You should not
infer that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I came not to destroy,
but to fulfill.’ (I used the concordant literal version there) Why would we
infer that Jesus came to do away with these things? As I’ve already pointed
out, Jesus didn’t exactly live by the words of the law or the prophets in a way
that the people were expecting.
So if that all checks out (I know some
people will still be inclined to disagree with me about the laws part of it
all, but I want to get through this whole Passover thing), then the next thing
we need, to make us safe inside God’s household of faith, is the required
method to apply the blood.
A hyssop plant, most people wouldn’t know,
grows in a fairly basic fractal pattern, the image of the cross, repeating from
the root to the tip of the stem (even the flowers grow closely alongside the
leaves at these ‘cross’ sections). And if dipped in blood and then struck onto
a flat surface, it would leave that same pattern of the cross behind. This
makes it pretty obvious that the cross is what we need to apply the spiritual
blood of Christ.
So what is the cross, spiritually speaking?
Of course we know how a cross works in a natural sense. Jesus suffered, bled,
and died the death of his natural body on one. But that did show more details
in the pattern we must follow on a spiritual level. The Bible tells us to ‘crucify
the flesh’ and ‘mortify the deeds of the body.’ This is more spiritual talk
about things God requires of us if we want to have eternal life in Him.
Even in Stephen’s testimony/sermon he talks
about how we need to be circumcised in our hearts, as in having the flesh (the carnality
of life) removed from our hearts. The key to accomplishing this is in the mind,
the way we think about things. The Bible says in Rom. 8:1-8, ‘There is
therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit, for they that are after the flesh do mind the
things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the
Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the
flesh cannot please God.’
And in 1 Pet. 4:1-2 it says, ‘Forasmuch
then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with
the same mind, for he who is suffering in the flesh has ceased from sin; that
he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh in human desires,
but in the will of God.’
These passages of scripture make it pretty
clear that we need to be of the mind that is subject to God and His law, the
mind which allows for us to suffer in the flesh, but not in a bad way, in the
way that we instead live in God’s will rather than striving for those things
that only satisfy our own human desires. We need to deny our own carnal mind
and instead put on the mind of Christ, and then we can follow the same strait
way in which Jesus walked. It’s as he said in Luke 9:23, ‘If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily, and follow me.’ There
he shows the same pattern: deny yourself, pick up your cross, and then you can
follow Jesus. And, of course, where is Jesus, safe and sound inside God’s
house.
So here is the pattern revealed so far: we
need to take the sin-overcoming power of the Holy Spirit, use the mind of
Christ (be subject to God in all things) to use that power to live by God’s law
as well as the words of His prophets, and then we may enter through that portal
into the household of faith where we will be safe from death.
One final element of the Passover remains:
the meal, the food (yes, I saved the best for last). It is a meal of the lamb
itself (the meat, not the blood), and also unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
It’s conceivable that with all these ingredients they could have made some sort
of sandwich wrap, but they most likely didn’t. But the meal, just like the
other aspects of Passover, has spiritual significance as well.
Food, spiritually speaking, is whatever we
might feed our inner man with: scriptures and doctrine, songs and hymns,
corrections and reproofs, prayer and fellowship. In the case of this meal,
unleavened bread is Biblical teaching/doctrine that is without bias or
hypocrisy (1 Cor. 5:8), bitter herbs are things more difficult to swallow but
that truly strengthen the inner man (i.e. correction and reproof), and the lamb
brings to mind the verse (Psalm 34:8) that says, ‘taste and see that the Lord
is good,’ for the Lamb (Jesus) is tender and sweet and… juicy and… would
probably go well with horserad- ok, now I’m hungry and getting off topic. The
point is, these are all good things we’ll need to partake of, as part of our
escape from the clutches of death.
And so I think that’s it. If you think I
might have missed something or if something requires more clarification,
anything at all, feel free to leave comments and questions.
As for myself, I will celebrate the Spring
Feasts of Yehovah as well as I am able. And I hope everyone has a happy long
weekend. God bless you!
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